A series of delays placed a Black Hawk pilot and a former athletic trainer in the right place and time to rescue a wrecked and hurt airplane pilot from a fire outside Meeteetse, Wyoming, on Sunday.
When the pilot’s plane went down, it had sparked a fire in the trees around him.
Steve Atencio and J.R. Larsen were out looking for big horn sheep Sunday morning so they could fill Larsen’s hunting tag, the pair told Cowboy State Daily in a Tuesday interview.
Atencio is a Black Hawk pilot for the Wyoming Army Guard in Cheyenne and has a background in firefighting, while Larsen worked prior as a certified athletic trainer.
Neither expected to use their professional skills to help an injured pilot while out hunting.
They’d had a few setbacks that morning, including going the wrong way while trying to retrace a friend’s suggested route and avoiding grizzly bears. They spotted four wolves and spent some time watching them. Larsen fell a few times in the treacherous scree, or loose stones and dirt on the hillside.
At about 10:45 that morning, both men heard a sputter, followed by a booming thump.
Atencio, who takes notice of aircraft, had seen a plane flying overhead moments earlier, but he wasn’t sure if the noise was connected to that plane sighting, he told Cowboy State Daily.
“We looked at each other and said, ‘What the hell was that?’” said Atencio.
They didn’t see anything, and they wondered if the vast but difficult landscape had carried a distant sound to them.
Five minutes later, they crested a hill and saw black smoke rising from the trees.
They reached for their phones.
It was “bizarre,” said Atencio, but this was the first time all day that neither man had cellphone service, though they use different wireless carriers.
Atencio used his Garmin inReach device to send out an SOS. He later managed to get a text out to his wife, telling her to call the Park County Sheriff’s Office. Then the Garmin finally connected with the sheriff’s office and authorities started tracking the inReach device from there, Atencio said.
Down The Stairs, Up The Stairs
Meanwhile, Atencio and Larsen scrambled toward the smoke with their hunting packs on for the next 10-15 minutes.
It was “kind of a blur,” Atencio said. “We were both blasting through the trees as fast as we could.”
Larsen was moving faster, as Atencio was working with authorities and with other emergency contacts whom his Garmin had incidentally pinged.
Larsen went down a slippery hillside, tripping a few times along the way. The earth would give way underneath him, then he’d find himself on another “stair” before moving forward again, he said. He climbed up a hill in the same manner.
The two men kept their gear on for the mission — Larsen had a 40-pound pack and Atencio’s weighed about 35-40 pounds. They weren’t sure if they’d need anything inside them.
This proved to be another vital coincidence.
Anybody There?
Larsen saw the fire first.
It wasn’t a “raging inferno” then, but the trees were burning and the smoke clouded his vision.
“Is anybody there?” called Larsen.
A man lying facedown just north of the fire with his hands under his head said something along the lines of, “Yes, I’m here.”
“Are you OK?” asked Larsen.
“I think my back’s broke,” the man answered, according to Larsen’s interview.
The man’s arms and legs were moving. Larsen looked around for another plane occupant but couldn’t find anyone. The man told Larsen he believed the woman, a passenger, had died.
“That’s when it started to hit home how serious this was,” Larsen told Cowboy State Daily.
Atencio arrived about that moment and checked the plane and surrounding areas for survivors himself.
It was completely engulfed in flames, and the forest around it was on fire. He and Larsen scoured the area repeatedly and couldn’t see any survivors.
The flames started creeping toward the pilot. Larsen and Atencio knew they had to get him out of there, the latter recalled.
Atencio, a former firefighter, wasn’t just worried about the heat harming the injured man. He was also concerned about falling trees. Even then, branches were falling.
The men tried to put a tarp under the pilot but it ripped. Eventually, Atencio took his pack frame apart and built a makeshift harness to strap the pilot to it. It was a strenuous process pulling the man through the thick trees, trying not to grapple with the severe burns on his hands and body, he recalled.
Also, the pack “kind of gave out,” said Larsen.
“Leave me here,” said the pilot, who said he was nauseous and pained.
“He was a trooper for making it as far as he did,” Larsen said, noting that the men managed to move him twice, to a relatively safe location.
On A Knoll
Still coordinating with authorities, Atencio scoped out a landing zone for the rescue helicopter.
“I’m usually on the other end of this stuff,” said Atencio. But his knowledge of landing in tricky spaces with sparse information helped him guide the rescue helicopter to a place where it could land. He chose a landing zone on a wide-open spur of the hill about 75 yards from the crash.
And he might have overwhelmed responders with information, he added, referencing his own need for a lot of information when he’s approaching an emergency scene.
Passenger’s Body Found
The two men helped responders secure the pilot onto a board and carried him gingerly downhill toward the helicopter. Then it loaded the injured man and flew away.
The hunters surveyed the scene some more and found the female passenger, deceased.
Larsen didn’t know the last names or the agency of two of the first responders — Jake and Robert — but they were quick to come down the hill and secure the scene, he said.
The two hunters were left with Atencio’s broken pack, which a paramedic had cut off the pilot’s body. They worked to bind everything back together and get back home.
What Are The Odds
Larsen marveled Tuesday at his friend’s ability to guide the helicopter in, and at the rescue pilot’s ability to make the landing.
He also marveled at the odds of them being there in the first place. They were on a strange route, behind schedule, and happened to be standing on a hill out of their course when they first noticed the smoke.
“Nothing about where we were headed was part of the plane,” said Larsen. “For whatever reason, that’s where we were put.”
Atencio agreed, saying, “I feel like we were supposed to be there – though it’s unfortunate, what happened.”
The pilot is still alive and is being treated in Billings, Montana, says a Tuesday statement from Park County Coroner Cody Gortmaker.
The statement also identifies the deceased passenger as Mary Lou Sanderson, 78, of Lake Havasu, Arizona.
Clair McFarland can be reached at clair@cowboystatedaily.com.
